"The Promise: Artists to Benefit CCA Tel Aviv" (open by appointment)

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Image: The Buddhist temple where Pratchaya Phinthong “sourced” the piece of wall for his piece, It is better to have done good and died than to have lived and done nothing (2018); the sentence is a Buddhist proverb, which is written on the wall itself; as part of its production, CCA Tel Aviv paid a donation to the temple.

CCA – Center for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv is pleased to announce “The Promise: Artists to Benefit CCA Tel Aviv”, an exhibition featuring works of art by Diti Almog, Yael Bartana, Keren Cytter, Yael Efrati, Asaf Elkalai, Noa Glazer, The Haas Brothers, Reuven Israel, Liora Kaplan, Esther Kläs, Alex Mirutziu, Jordan Nassar, Karam Natour, Ruth Patir, Pratchaya Phinthong, Yana Rotner, Barak Rubin, Haim Steinbach, Nahum Tevet, Naama Tsabar, Sharif Waked, Alexandra Zuckerman, Noa Zuk & Ohad Fishof.

Displayed throughout the entire building, “The Promise” sheds light on the history and program of this Institution, presenting works by artists who exhibited at CCA Tel Aviv in the past – often showing exactly the same works – as well as works by artists who will exhibit in the future and artists whose work is in tune with the atmosphere of the exhibition. Placed under the same roof, these works of art have been gathered to benefit the program of the Center as well as the artists who helped make this exhibition happen in such challenging and unprecedented times.

Despite the fact that all the artworks presented in the exhibition were created before the spread of Covid-19, many of them suggest that art making is an act that is carried out, ultimately, in solitude, privately, with no direct connection outside the self. This approach – which acquires, in the current scenario, additional layers of meaning – was honored by the co-curators, who decided to select the works in tandem and developed their own interpretation of the title, and its related articulations, without discussing these with each other. Furthermore, the exhibition’s title implies the notion of a “Promised Land” –which has been adopted by such radical thinkers as Martin Luther King – a notion conceived in deeply universal terms, since it defines a state of liberation, a “holy site,” a free territory – where “free” means freedom of thought and freedom of expression. At the same time, it also becomes a metaphor for the role of art institutions, and CCA Tel Aviv specifically, being the site (the land) of the sign (the promise) of engagement and support that is bestowed on the artist by the institution itself and by those who represent it.

The Promise is co-curated by Nicola Trezzi, Director and Curator, and Thomas Rom, Executive Board Member at CCA Tel Aviv. It is accompanied by a digital catalogue in English (printed on demand) which includes essays by the co-curators, reproductions of the artworks included (presented with full details and artist biographies), and enriched by quotes by some of the participants, alongside those written by luminaries in the field such as Nicolas Bourriaud (CEO, MO.CO. Montpellier Contemporain), Simon Castets (Director Swiss Institute / Contemporary Art, New York), Joseph Del Pesco (International Director, KADIST, San Francisco / Paris), Ines Goldbach (Director / Curator, Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz / Basel), Donatien Grau (Advisor to the President of the Musées d’Orsay and l’Orangerie for contemporary programs at Musée d’Orsay, Paris), Gabriele Horn (Director, Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art), Zoe Lukov (Chief Curator, Faena Art Center, Buenos Aires / Miami), David Neuman (Director Emeritus / Chairman, Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art, Stockholm / Jaffa), Hans Ulrich Obrist (Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries, London), Marta Ponsa (Head of artistic projects and cultural action, Jeu de Paume, Paris), Yasmil Raymond (Rector, Städelschule Academy of Fine Art / Director, Portikus, Frankfurt), and James Snyder (Director, Jerusalem Foundation / Director Emeritus, Israel Museum Jerusalem).

THE PROMISE: ARTISTS TO BENEFIT CCA TEL AVIV

November 8 - 28, 2020

Artists: Diti Almog, Yael Bartana, Keren Cytter, Yael Efrati, Asaf Elkalai, Noa Glazer, The Haas Brothers, Reuven Israel, Liora Kaplan, Esther Kläs, Alex Mirutziu, Jordan Nassar, Karam Natour, Ruth Patir, Pratchaya Phinthong, Yana Rotner, Barak Rubin, Haim Steinbach, Nahum Tevet, Naama Tsabar, Sharif Waked, Alexandra Zuckerman, Noa Zuk & Ohad Fishof.

For more information about “The Promise” please email CCA Tel Aviv Office Manager Guy Bernard Reichmann at info@cca.org.il or CCA Tel Aviv Assistant Curator Bar Goren at bar@cca.org.il.

To schedule a visit or to purchase the catalogue please contact CCA Tel Aviv Content Manager Mona Benyamin at office@cca.org.il.

CCA – Center for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv

www.cca.org.il

Outset Residency has supported “Gaining in a State of Debt”, Alex Mirutziu`s first solo show in Israel

Alex Mirutziu (1981, Romania) was a guest of Outset Bialik Residency during March 2019. During his residency Mirutziu prepared his solo exhibition “Gaining in a State of Debt”, presented at The Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, curated by Nicola Trezzi.

“Gaining in a State of Debt” is the first solo exhibition by Romanian artist Alex Mirutziu (1981, Sibiu, Romania. Lives and works in Cluj-Napoca, Romania).

Mirutziu’s practice extends over a wide range of media and activities, including sculpture, drawing, poetry, and performance, as well as critical and curatorial projects. In his work, which is both highly intellectual and deeply physical, he expands the notions of approximation and proximity in connection to time, presenting “dislocated modes of arrival at meaning.” In his modus operandi, he seeks to facilitate the understanding of the body as a “turbulent performative occasion” – drawing on the poetics of homelessness and invisibility. Through his artworks, he looks at ways of suspending the set-ups of doing and un-doing, thinking and un-thinking. Alongside TAH29 (The Artist Himself at 29), he acts within a collective body whose modus operandi is “retroactive irony.”

His exhibition at CCA Tel Aviv features a new performative work, entitled Bottoms Know It, and a compilation of videos that contextualize the new work and at the same time open up new avenues of understanding. Conceived for CCA Tel Aviv and featuring three performers and three props, Bottoms Know It exposes what may come across as being implicit but unnoticed, which is not necessarily a feature of truth-making.

Through the combination of different streams of thoughts and informed by philosophical concepts that are always personalized and freely interpreted, the artist is capable of creating time-based and durational experiences between himself and the viewer, using the artwork – whether in the form of an object or a body (his own or somebody else’s) – as a channel, a catalyst, a sort of remote controller that is linking two individuals, himself and the viewer, possibly located in two different geographical and time zones. However, all the aforementioned notions never come as we usually expect them: “time-based” should be considered according to an unusual notion of time; “durational” should be perceived according to a larger scope of perception. The work of Alex Mirutziu not only makes us think, it also makes us think about the conditions allowing us to think, and un-think, to do, and un-do.